Lowest Averages

Worst Career Batting Averages by Position, 1920-2008 (1000 G. minimum)

C – Buck Martinez (1969-1986) .225
1B – Mike Jorgensen (1968-1985) .243
2B – Bobby Knoop (1964-1972) .236
SS – Bobby Wine (1960-1972) .215
3B – Aurelio Rodriguez (1967-1983) .237
RF – Tom Brunansky (1981-1994) .245
CF – Gary Pettis (1982-1992) .236
LF – Greg Vaughn (1989-2000) .242

The Flukiest Record of Them All

Most baseball fans can trace the evolution of the season home run record back from Barry Bonds to Mark McGwire to Roger Maris and to Babe Ruth, who broke the record in 1919 and the exceeded his own record three more times before retiring. But whose record did Ruth break?

In 1884, the National League was beginning its ninth season. The major league season record for home runs was 14, set in the American Association, a marginal major league. The NL record was 10. When the season was over, the Chicago White Stockings (the team now knows as the Cubs) had finished 5th in an eight-team league. But five of their players had exceeded the old NL record for home runs; four of them topping 20 roundtrippers apiece, led by third baseman Ed Williamson's 27. Williamson held the record until Ruth connected for 29 in 1919.

How did Williamson and the White Stockings' other sluggers do it? Had they discovered steriods a century before anyone else? No, their secret lay in the park in which the White Stockings played, Lakefront Park. Left field in the park was just 186 feet from home and right field was 190 feet away. In every other season played there, ground rules had stated that balls hit over the fence were doubles. Before the '84 seasons, the club decided that they would be home runs, with the result that the White Stockings hit 142 homes runs that year, the most by a team until Ruth's 1927 Yankees hit 158. Williamson hit 25 of his 27 homers in Chicago, but never got a chance to repeat his feat, as the team moved into a new park with more normal dimensions in 1885. Williamson never hit more than 9 home runs in any other season of his career, before or after 1884. Standing for one year longer than Ruth's record of 60, Williamson's season home run record stands as one of the biggest flukes in baseball history.

Jimmy Claxton - Pioneer

One of the most interesting footnotes in baseball history is Jimmy Claxton. Claxton pitched briefly for the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League in 1916. What is significant about Claxton is not his playing career, but his race; he was the first player of African-American ancestry to play for a predominately white professional team in the 20th Century. Claxton may have been as little as one-sixth African-American and was able to pass himself off as a Native American (which also may have been in his background).

Sources disagree on how much Claxton actually pitched. According to the Baseball-Reference.com's minor league encyclopedia (which spells his last name "Klaxton"), he got into two games, starting one, and pitching a total of 2.1 innings with no decisions and a 7.71 ERA. According to James A. Riley's "Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues" Claxton pitched in five games, starting three and finishing with a record of 0-1. Both sources agree that he was released after about a month with the team, probably because team brass learned of his true racial identity. According to Riley, Claxton subsequently pitched for African-American teams for many years.

Another first for Claxton: at the time he played for Oakland, a company named Zeanuts produced baseball cards of PCL players. Despite Claxton's brief time with the Oaks, he was included on one of the company's cards, becoming the first black player ever to be featured on a baseball card.